Heather Yakin: NRA chief's position demonizes mentally ill

No one should be surprised that the NRA executive vice president's answer to the Newtown shooting was to put armed cops or armed guards in every school.

After all, the organization dedicated to unfettered access to firearms isn't going to suddenly come out and say we should have fewer guns, or less powerful guns, or limitations on the number of bullets one can fire in a few seconds' time.

The proposal LaPierre made is already in effect in every school that has a DARE officer or a school resource officer, albeit without the dramatic "National School Shield Emergency Response Program" moniker.

The National Association of School Resource Officers supports armed police officers — although not volunteers, as the NRA proposes — in schools, so long as they are trained in teaching and counseling, and in dealing with active shooters.

The reason I've decided to throw the ad hominem of "jerk" in Mr. LaPierre's direction is the way he chose to describe people with mental illness in his prepared remarks on Friday.

Before he got to griping about how the media "demonize gun owners," LaPierre did a little demonizing of his own.

"The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people that are so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can ever possibly comprehend them. They walk among us every single day. And does anybody really believe that the next (killer) isn't planning his attack on a school he's already identified at this moment?" LaPierre said.

He used the Newtown shooter's name, seemingly oblivious to irony as he continued: "How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame — from a national media machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and a sense of identity that they crave — while provoking others to make their mark?"

Yes: He first called people with severe mental illness "monsters," "deranged" and "evil." He decried "our nation's refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill," as if a psychiatric diagnosis is on par with being a convicted rapist or pedophile.

Demonizing doesn't advance a reasoned debate.

Just as the vast majority of people who have AR-15s are law-abiding, responsible gun owners, the vast majority of people with mental illnesses will never hurt anyone else. Even among the most severely ill, few will ever pick up a weapon.

In fact, someone with a disability, including a cognitive disability, is twice as likely as someone nondisabled to be violently victimized.

Part of the reason that's so is that our society often treats people with disabilities as if they are other — somehow less than human.

Look at LaPierre, who used his bully pulpit to defend guns by trotting out fear mongering, dehumanizing slurs.